How To Sail To Another Solar System

This illustration shows a sail ship moving out to interstellar distances.
Adrian Mann
Sail ships might be the spacecraft that first take humans to distant stars.

Giant sails propelled by the sun's or a laser's energy could be the most viable option for interstellar spaceflight in the not-too-distant future, James Benford, a physicist associated with Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit group devoted to finding a way to travel to another star system, said during a panel at the Starship Congress conference in August.

Rockets won't do the job "because we haven't gotten fusion yet," Benford said. "Beyond that is antimatter rockets that suffer not only from a very difficult design problem, but the absence of the fuel."

That leaves sail ships. "I would say that I think sail ships are going to be the first starships, because we know how to do it," Benford said.

A solar sail in space works almost like a ship sailing on the seas. Engineers can use photons emitted by a star to both propel and steer a spacecraft.

Benford also has been working with laser technology to gather more information about how to propel sails outside the solar system using a "beamer." The structure would use lasers, or perhaps microwaves, directed on the sail to push it ever farther into deep space.

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